I recently bought a Sony Cybershot w150 not the latest box out of the Sony stable but a very good compact which I have thoroughly tested & found it to be a keeper.

I had previously bought and returned TWO Panasonic Lumix TZ5, one with a defective microphone and the other refusing to focus on people at the long end of the zoom. I was very disappointed especially since Gordon had given it such a good review and there were many aspects of the camera that I enjoyed but two duds in a row told me it wasn't the camera for me.

The w150 is a kind of interim camera for me. It will supplement my Canon S3 for walking around and travelling and is much more compact than the Canon.

What I like about it is the image quality. I have printed up some lovely 8x10s that are as sharp as tacks and with accurate colour. You have a choice of whether you want basic colour or Vivid. Both are well saturated and attractive; choose whatever is your taste.

While there are no manual controls the P programme does have some control over things like ISO, focus, metering and other adjustments. The screen at the back is a generous 2.7 inches and the lens itself is a 5x zoom starting at 28mm.

About the size of a deck of cards, the w150 fits nicely in the hand. And yes it does have a viewfinder which I really like even if it is small. The ISO ranges from 80 to 3200 while the latter may be something to use only in emergencies it is still useable and makes fair smaller prints from low light situations.

It has some nice-to-have features such as face recognition, smile shutter, in-camera editing and retouching and average video quality, handy in a pinch. You can show stills in HD on HDTV but not movies.

All in all it's a good little camera especially for C$149, one that will do me until my dream machine comes along.